The Violent Child

by Michael Sheridan

  “Call her Low-rain,” Claudell says.

  Bug laughs again, this time in short, stuttered bursts.

  “Low-rent?”

  “Yeah.” Claudell pushes Robert out the door.

  Claudell and Bug move to the sidewalk and begin to negotiate. Bug shakes his head, attempting to walk away, but Claudell jumps in front of him, barring his path each time Bug pushes past him. Robert seems tired and confused, and squats with his head on his arms in the middle of the parking strip. I watch for awhile, listening as Claudell pleads his case, but Bug will not be moved.

  Finally, I rev the truck’s engine and drop the transmission into first gear. I let out the clutch, and the tires squeal as I swerve away from the curb and fishtail into the street. Looking into the rearview mirror, I power-shift into second, and watch the boys watching me until I am out of sight. I shift into third and run a light as it changes to red.

  My 1957 Ranchero is my single luxury—the only thing of consequence I salvaged from my last marriage—though Claudell and his friends would laugh to hear me say it. They see the faded beige paint, the patches of grey primer, the scarred and dented bed. They see nothing more than a disintegrating, worthless scrap of metal, and they wonder that it still runs, that I would pay to keep it safe. I suppose they must see the truck much in the way they see me: not long from joining the other rusting hulks abandoned in front yards and vacant lots.

  But, I have restored or improved everything below the truck’s skin. An eight cylinder engine with an enormous four barrel carburetor. Three-speed racing transmission with the stick moved to the floor. New drive train and suspension, hula girl on the dash, pink dice hanging from the mirror. Nine miles to the gallon on the interstate. It is only an expensive paint job and some minor body work away from requiring a lock and chain even in my neighborhood.

  I take pleasure in the driving and refuse to sequester this machine’s power and beauty by parading it out of the garage only for weekend drives and auto shows. I want to feel the acceleration, the aggressive response of the engine. The tight, clean corners of control. I need to speed down darkened streets, power poles and dumpsters flicking by, trash and cinders whipping in the wash. There is little danger. I grew up here, and I know every alley and side street. Where the long-haul truckers stop for drugs and hookers, where the hookers hide when the black and whites cruise past on their nightly rounds. I have learned where to slow down, when to open up.

  I shift down for the tracks at the edge of the old slag yard and the muffler rumbles and moans. The mill has been closed for twenty years and, except for a few lighted towers and rooftops set deep into the property, all is black a few feet in from the street. I ease over the tracks and accelerate.

  Unlike the times when the mill was running three shifts a day, seven days a week, the traffic on the gate road is now sparse. Almost nonexistent this time of night. Leo drove this street to work for thirty-three years, Trudy and Lorraine for over twenty. Their generations were hardier. Their industrial base more robust. I lasted only six.

  Now, the single indication that anyone cares about the place is a strand of shiny new razor wire coiled along the top of the twelve-foot chain link fence. The people are gone. The tools and the coal, the cranes and the paychecks. The furnaces have been dismantled and shipped to Indonesia. The rail yard is overgrown with thistles; sections of oxidized track criss-cross the empty acres, fallen stacks of ties rot in dark, tumbled heaps. I wonder at the razor wire: what is left to steal?

  I punch the accelerator and all four barrels of the carburetor open wide. There is a sense of ease which comes of deserted streets and uninhibited acceleration. A peace in the wide, uninterrupted path before the headlights.

  I swerve to straddle the larger potholes, and the chassis chatters as the suspension gobbles the smaller ones. The steering column trembles as the tires fly over the many ruts and sections of washboard; the black wand of the tachometer whips between the green and the red as I thread the truck along the crumbling asphalt.

  I turn on the radio, and it hums for a moment before the dial wakes in a slow, golden glow. The light from the instrument panel is cool and blue, and the way it falls upon my gloves makes my hands seem huge and otherworldly. I turn down the heater and thumb the dial to the college station; I push in the lighter and fumble for a cigarette.

  The street lights grow brighter and bunch close together as I approach the entrance to the mill. High, bright floods shine down upon the wrought iron gate, the darkened watchman’s booth, then all disappears in a wink of flashing chain link. The road becomes smoother; I relax my grip upon the wheel.

  I have been thinking of Robert and Claudell. How unsure I feel in their company. And, in the way that fathers now grow unsure of their sons, I am at a loss to foster a breeding ground for mutual transmission. I, like the rest, do nothing more than watch as the Roberts and Claudells slip through our fingers, receding further and further from any hope of benign influence.

  It was different for Leo and me. There were cold winter nights hunkered in his garage, heads bent over engines, droplights swinging from raised hoods. Oil rags and gasoline, the bite of tools and sipping whiskey. There was time to stand together, the old with the young, rubbing hands over crackling barrel fires, sparks rising up, fat snowflakes hissing into the drum. And summer afternoons with cars pulled into Leo’s back yard, hoods gaping beneath the flowing leaves, six packs warming on the front seats. Times for speaking and listening. A time when the old welcomed the young, the young learned to accommodate what was expected. A ground for mutual transmission.

  But, in the context of the vast, empty territories now accumulating between fathers and sons, these rites seem pathetically inadequate—gone the way of the mills and the paychecks. The new rituals are late in coming: fathers wander away, sons are set adrift. Young men sit before televisions absorbing instruction from gangster videos; their elders sit in another room, tuned to another channel, bereft of relevance.

  When Leo was alive, the edges were better defined. With Leo, there was always the feeling that life was manageable. Like cars. Amenable to fixing. There was a potency, a surety in his manner. The way he grunted and raked his fingernails over his neck whiskers. How he cleared his throat and rattled his newspaper, which taught me, unequivocally, the character of boundaries. What was expected. What was taboo. Somehow, effortlessly, he established love and limits in the same gesture.

  In all the years of his life, Leo never once raised his hand to me. But if he never gave me reason to fear him, I was dearly afraid of disappointing him. One look from Leo, even a hint of disapproval, hurt worse than if he had knocked me across the room. There was something in the way he held himself when he walked, the way he was quiet when others were shouting, the way he would smile at me when someone was being foolish or mean-spirited that made me want to be like him.

  Early on, though I do not recall the moment, I resolved I would become a Leo rather than a Ted. The fact that I have been unable to attain to my resolution in no way diminishes my love or gratitude.

  ELEVEN

  The Ranchero glides along the interstate, windows rolled down, heater turned high and opened wide. Whenever the tires bump across the glittering lane dividers, I hang my head out the window for a bracer of cold, rushing night. Though I am aware of the hazards of medicating personal history, it seems that, tonight, some residual adolescent willfulness rejects any notion of moderation or common sense.

  It is late, but I am unready for sleep, unprepared to face an empty bed and empty apartment. I have only two classes today, and both are in the afternoon: I will be able to sleep in, rise for a leisurely shower, then walk around the corner to the Wigwam for a pot of coffee and pitcher of Bloody Marys before work. Double-shaved and crunching breath mints, I shall enter the faculty lounge smiling the sad, brave smile which says to my colleagues that the grey in my face is nothing more than another long but innocent evening spent wired on coffee and cigarettes, exorcising demons at St. Theresa’
s AA.

  I turn onto the River Road cutoff, and the transmission whines as I downshift into second gear. The Ranchero has sped down this road so many times, I imagine that if I folded my arms and shut my eyes for a brief nap, I would wake to find myself in Junior’s driveway, engine gently idling, truck and self intact.

  No admonitions from Junior. No recriminations. Just a scornful laugh at my stupidity. For, Junior and I have been friends since childhood, the kind of friends who have learned to accommodate one another’s lunacies and shortcomings; we are brothers of circumstance, our early lives grafted upon the roots of our compelling heritage. Our friendship endures with little vexation, because we hold one another to a very simple standard: fierce, unquestioning loyalty, and the speaking of personal truth, no matter how brutal, how trenchant our contrasting points of view. In these things, we remain steadfast, and we rely upon one another’s truth in all matters except love and intimacy. These subjects remain, as they do with most men of our context, taboo. When necessity requires that we speak of love at all, we speak minimally, with the gravest restraint and delicacy.

  “Salt and pepper,” Trudy said of us. “Two peas in a pod. Couldn’t pry them two apart with a crowbar.”

  “Junior’s daddy would of laughed like hell,” Leo once said, watching while Marge knelt before Junior and me, tucking and combing, preparing to send us off to our first day at St. Boneventure’s. “Clovis would of bust a gut, seein’ you two Whiz Kids all spruced up and off to St. B’s.” Leo’s expression was solemn, his eyes glittering with slow fire. “I’d give anything he’d lived to see it. But, listen here, Teddy. Any little folks give you trouble over Junior, you take care of it. You got to use your dukes, use ‘em. And, you, Junior, don’t take no crap off them white kids. You give ‘em a inch, they’ll take a mile. You two look out for each other, you’ll be okay. But, any big folks give you grief, either one of you, you come tell your grandpa. Grandpa’ll take care of the big ones.”

  He cracked the knobby knuckles of each fist, one after the other. The bones crunched like a grinding of stones.

  Lorraine loves to tell the story of Leo and Junior’s father. How they met. How the friendship of two boys grew out from the story of the older men. It is Lorraine’s kind of story. Hard times, hard work, and the stubborn, go-to-hellness that exemplifies her own life view and flatters her flamboyant style of telling. Though the story of Leo Woodard and Clovis Roosevelt Gilliam is one of those mythic family tales that I could imagine Lorraine embroidering for my benefit, I have verified the particulars while having morning coffee with Marge, and gin and sheet cake afternoons with Lilly Stapp, Junior’s maternal grandmother. It pleases me to watch Lorraine’s mood lighten as she settles into the details. And, I must admit that, of all those who tell it, she tells it best. There are times when I actually ask her to do so. Tonight, I could have listened all night, curled on her couch, falling deep into myself while feeding on the rare warmth of her words.

  “Back then,” Lorraine would begin, leaning forward, speaking softly in deference to her neighbors, “wasn’t like it is now. Colored was colored and white was white and that was that.”

  She would tap the arm of her chair with authority.

  “Nobody didn’t necessarily hate nobody, though there was plenty what did. You just live and let live, speak when spoken to, otherwise mind your own business. You sure as hell didn’t go out of your way to make friends with no coloreds or live in the same building with ‘em like we do now. They had names for whites that did, and it wasn’t worth the grief.

  “Even as far as your Grandpa Leo and Junior’s daddy, I bet neither one of ‘em ever seen the inside of each other’s house or ate off the same set of dishes.”

  At this point, Lorraine might withdraw, pretending she was deciding whether I was capable of keeping her secrets. I would raise my head from the couch, pledge my fidelity, and urge her to continue. After a moment, she would look at me out of the corner of her eye, appraising my reliability, then, with a sigh that would express her most severe reservations, resume.

  “Now, I’m going to tell some things from way back. Some even while you was still in my belly. Things ‘bout your buddy, Junior, and his people, and how ever’body’s business got mixed in with ever’body else’s. You don’t say a word to nobody on this, ‘specially Junior. There’s parts might hurt his feelings, and that ain’t right. This is all just between you and me and the gatepost. Gets back to me you run your mouth, Teddie, I’ll skin you alive.”

  I would raise my hand as if taking an oath.

  “Not a word,” I would say.

  “Well, the way I heard it on Junior’s daddy, he was brought up down South. Florida, or some damn place. Clovis Roosevelt Gilliam. Got in a tangle with the Klan or some damn thing, and his folks sent him up here. He met Junior’s mom at a tent revival over to that used-to-be colored Baptist Church by the old packing plant. Now, Clovis was churchy as a church mouse, but she could of cared less. She was just a young thing, went for the music and to meet folks. Far as the preachin’, she had to be half-dragged to go by her own mother, Junior’s Grandma Lilly. Ol’ Grandma Lilly wanted her daughter to ‘catch fire for Jesus and burn with the Light’. Well, I guess the kid caught fire for Clovis R. Gilliam instead, and they had to get married pretty quick, ‘cause before you could say ‘Mary, Mother of God’, here come your buddy, Clovis Roosevelt Gilliam, Jr.”

  Lorraine would tap her finger against her closed lips, then frown and wag it in front of my face.

  “Not a word,” I would say with as much solemnity as I could muster while fading into the couch.

  Lorraine would grunt as if she thought me capable of taking out an ad in the paper proclaiming Junior’s illegitimacy, but, by now, she was fully warmed to her story and would continue in spite of her misgivings.

  “Them was the days right after the war. Mills was booming. Jobs for pretty much ever’body—long as you was white. All Junior’s daddy could get was a couple of nickel and dime janitor jobs, and him with a wife and young boy. Whether it was good luck or bad, one of his jobs was the midnight clean-up man at the Blue Horizon. Leo was just out of prison and had took to drinkin’ at the Horizon regular, sometimes past closin’.

  “Leo had a buddy tendin’ bar, little Bobby What’s-his-name. Bobby ‘lowed Leo to drink while he rang out the till and Junior’s daddy swamped the floors and toilets.

  “You know that Leo did four years in the penitenchry, but that don’t tell it. What you don’t know is they give Leo ten years for that business with the union—when that boss’s kid got his legs broke and they burned up that rich man’s garage. He got off on the kid, but they give him ten years on the garage. Got out early on account of good behavior and the union pullin’ strings. Not that Leo wasn’t a roughneck. Rough as an old cob. But there was more to that business than just your Grandpa Leo. Lots of them uppity-ups in the union was in it up to their eyeballs, but Leo kept his mouth shut, and he was the only one that got put away.

  “Marge said she never heard the man say a word about it—before, during, or after. His own wife, but he never said a word, and that must of been the right thing. ‘Cause while Leo was gone, the mortgage on their house got paid like clockwork. A check for groceries showed up under your grandma’s door every month from the union Widow’s Fund. And the very same day your grandpa walked out that prison gate, he come to a new job at Number Five Furnace. He come out a foreman with his seniority upped twice for every day he was gone.”

  Lorraine would lean back in her chair, her face expressionless, but her eyes glowing with pride and secret satisfaction.

  “That big, pimple-faced Polack, that foreman that give me such a hard time? That was his brother’s job your grandpa took, but you didn’t hear word one to Leo out of that big-mouthed s.o.b. People knew better’n to mess with somebody had the union behind ‘em. Somebody like Leo Woodard.

  “Anyways, over at the Horizon, the three of ‘em—Leo, Bobby, and Junior’s dad—they was hittin
’ it off pretty good. Leo took a real shine to Junior’s dad, seein’ what a good worker he was and never a feel-sorry-for-himself word out of him. One night, when Leo was half shot, he says to Junior’s daddy, whyn’t he come work for him over at Number Five Furnace.

  “‘Jesus, Leo!’ Bobby says. ‘You know better’n that! They ain’t hirin’ Negroes over to the mill. ‘Less it’s some kind of clean-up don’t pay no better’n what I’m payin’ Clovis right here. Number Five Furnace? You’re pissin’ into the wind, Leo. Clovis, don’t you pay Leo no mind. Man’s pretty much drunk up all my Four Roses. All that talk’s just Four Roses talk.’”

  ‘Number Five Furnace,’ Leo says. ‘Third Tender.’

  “‘Ain’t a snowball’s chance in hell. Them’s white jobs and you damn well know it. You got whites on a waitin’ list long as your arm.’”

  “‘Mr. Bobby’s right, Mr. Leo,’ says Junior’s daddy. ‘Nothin’ but bad news comin’ out a somethin’ like that.’”

  “‘Clovis,’ Leo says, ‘didn’t think you was the kind of man lose any sleep over a couple of hard-ass rednecks.’

  “Junior’s daddy was a big man. Bigger even than Junior. He puts a big old hand on Leo’s shoulder and says real easy, ‘I ain’t, Mr. Leo. I fear the Lord and not no man He ever put on this earth. I just don’t want to see you come to no grief over it.’

  “Let me worry about that.’”

  ‘Dammit!’ Bobby says.

  “‘Shut up, Bobby,’ Leo says. ‘You just don’t want me stealing the best damn swamper you ever had in this place. Should see some of them clowns over on Five. Union spoiled ‘em rotten for a day’s work. Had my way, I’d get me three or four like Clovis here, and, come this summer, Five’d be cookin’ more steel than anybody seen since the war.’

  “Leo turns to Junior’s daddy, looks him up and down, and says, ‘Clovis, you don’t look like a man’s afraid of a hard day’s work.’